Discover Grafana 9.0: Visual Query Builders, Heatmap Panel & More
Grafana 9.0 introduces a suite of usability enhancements—including visual Prometheus and Loki query builders, an Explore‑to‑dashboard workflow, a high‑performance heatmap panel, command‑palette navigation, and improved alerting—making data exploration, visualization, and monitoring more intuitive for developers and operators.
Grafana 9.0 focuses on improving the user experience for observability and data visualization, making it easier to discover and investigate data.
Visual Prometheus Query Builder
The new visual query builder in Explore lets users write, edit, and understand PromQL queries using either a text editor (Code) or a visual Builder mode. Users can switch between modes, filter metrics and labels, apply mathematical operations via the Operations field, and use the Explain mode with in‑app guidance and hints.
Visual Grafana Loki Query Builder
A similar visual interface assists in creating LogQL queries for Loki, allowing users to add and edit label filters, parsers, and functions without memorizing syntax.
Explore‑to‑Dashboard Workflow
Grafana 9.0 adds a workflow that lets users create panels or dashboards directly from Explore, preserving query context and enabling one‑click panel/dashboard creation.
New Heatmap Panel
The redesigned heatmap panel offers higher performance (supporting over 200,000 data points), faster rendering, increased resolution, and customizable color scales.
Command Panel
Keyboard shortcuts (cmd+K on macOS, ctrl+K on Windows/Linux) open a command palette for quick navigation, query execution, view splitting, dashboard switching, and theme changes.
Panel Search
Panel titles can now be searched, simplifying the process of locating specific panels across multiple dashboards.
Trace Panel in Dashboards
A beta Trace panel allows visualizing traces directly within dashboards.
Dashboard Preview
The preview feature provides a summary overview of all available dashboards for faster discovery.
New Navigation
The navigation bar is expanded, includes starred dashboards, and provides quick access via the savedItems feature.
Grafana Alerting Improvements
Alerting UI and documentation have been refined, building on the changes introduced in version 8.0.
Download Grafana at https://grafana.com/grafana/download and view release details at https://github.com/grafana/grafana/releases/tag/v9.0.0 .
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Programmer DD
A tinkering programmer and author of "Spring Cloud Microservices in Action"
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